Much has been made of Donald Trump’s campaign canceling a “joke” in the podcast host’s now-infamous speech. Tony Hinchcliffe during the heady MAGA hate rally from Madison Square Garden Sunday: the appointment of Vice President Kamala Harris the floor. As I wrote in the Standing Room Only newsletterthis shows that the campaign knew Hinchcliffe was planning a highly racist set. I suspect that racism was a sick form of strategy, a continuation of the Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s infamous “zone flooding” tactic. Note that the Trump campaign was only trying to distance itself from comments calling Puerto Ricans — who have a strong turnout in some swing states — “trash.” but not from the rest of his set or many other vile things said by other speakers.

Censorship of the C-word probably happened because it’s profanity, not because it’s misogynistic. We know this because Hinchcliffe’s other misogynistic “jokes” were left in, including fantasizing about killing pop star Taylor Swift. “I think Travis Kelce could be the next OJ Simpson,” Hinchcliffe said of Swift’s NFL-playing boyfriend. Swift has been the subject of violent ire by many MAGA leaders, including billionaire Elon Musk, who issued a not-so-subtle rape threat after Swift endorsed Harris for president. And this is not out of character for Musk, who bought himself a seat so close to Trump’s side that he often it looks like it has been replaced Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. It is Musk who has shown, in the last few days before the election, that misogyny is right there. racism as the closing argument of the Trump campaign.

While Trump’s team struck out the word “joke” from Hinchcliffe’s set, they didn’t seem to mind that Musk’s political action committee, American PAC, led an ad declaring, “Kamala Harris is a C-word.“Or, they didn’t bother until it started to dawn on them that Trump’s hate rally in New York might have backfired, at which point Musk quietly removed the ad. But it was too late, as progressive groups had captured the image.

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No one doubts, of course, the misogyny of Musk and Trump and the MAGA movement. Just last year, a jury found that Trump sexually assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll. He has been accused by countless other women, many of whom describe assaults similar to the one he bragged about in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. Several former employees of Musk’s have filed lawsuits sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuits. But what’s a little strange is how the Trump campaign has embraced misogyny, right up to this last minute fight. Proud misogyny is also a feature at Trump rallies, as we saw just a few days ago when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson gave a speech in which he launched an incestuous BDSM fantasy . about “Dad” giving the “bad girl” a “vigorous kick”, imagined as a teenage daughter.

Even when he promises to “protect” women, Trump can’t help but sound creepy or menacing. wednesday night he told a crowd in Wisconsin that he wanted to to “protect the women of our country” and, “I will do it whether women like it or not.” Feminists have long argued that “chivalry” is just another form of male dominance disguised as benevolence. Trump, as he often does, proves the feminist case.

Additionally, Trump continued with, “Is there a woman in this stadium who wants to be protected by the president?”

Former Governor Nikki Haley, RS.C., the Trump campaign complained on Tuesday “Cheese and masculinity stuff,” saying it “will make women uncomfortable,” which is an understatement, given that both proven and alleged victims of Trump report being traumatized by his sex crimes. But Trump is unlikely to listen to Haley. First of all, she’s a woman, so he doesn’t care what she thinks. Second, toxic masculinity is not a slip or a blunder. It’s a deliberate strategy by the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign is aware that the sexist tragedy, as well as the end of abortion rights, has led to a loss of support for women that is poised to create a record gender gap in this election. As documented by numerous outlets, they think they can make up for those losses reaching out to men with implicit – albeit unrealizable – attractions about how they can bring women to heel. I saw the “backstage women” panel at the Republican National Convention, where female stars who once emerged from the MAGA world, such as Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, they were pushed to the sidelargely ignored by both leaders and delegates.

It’s hard to say if this bet was a bad one, as the polls have remained in a heat over the past week. But it’s a big risk for the GOP, for one simple reason: women vote more than men. The Trump campaign hopes that by exposing misogyny, they can get many of those infrequent male voters to turn out. That can happen. It seems unwise, however, because in the process they are eliminating more reliable voters. That Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York TimesTrump’s gains “with young men are less striking than Harris’s huge advantage with young women.” If Harris wins, he argues, “we might look back and say we should have focused a little more on the women, young people and others, who were most likely to make a difference.” Certainly the head of one of Trump’s “get out the vote” operations, Charlie Kirk, is worried. Wednesday, he worried that women were voting at higher ratesadding: “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Who knows if Trump’s campaign managers think misogyny is a clever tactic, or if they’re simply trying to make electoral lemonade out of political lemons. The latter makes sense. Trump and the men around him are so dedicated to hating women that there’s probably no way to get them to tone it down. In the world of MAGA, the only way to be a man is to embrace toxic masculinity. That much was cleared up in a recent Q&A eventwhere Musk lamented, “If masculinity is so toxic, why don’t kids who are messed up have fathers?”

There is no need to repeat here the long debunkings of this myth, which you can read elsewhere. But it’s telling that Musk ignores the fact that when fathers abandon their children, it’s usually a direct result of toxic masculinity. It is toxic masculinity that tells men it is emasculating to embrace caregiving duties. It is toxic masculinity that teaches that a man’s role is to be a distant ‘provider’ who is barely around and disappears altogether if the relationship with their mother ends. Musk should know this, as his daughter told NBC News“He doesn’t know what I was like as a kid because he just wasn’t there,” and it’s “generous” to say he was around “maybe 10% of the time.” This is toxic masculinity incarnate: believing “paternity” means bringing your DNA and putting your name on a birth certificate, but nothing more.

Of course, in the MAGA world they don’t blame men who abandon their children. They blame women. When a man like Musk turns away from his children, the right wants to accuse the mother of running him away, usually by not being submissive enough. In the Trump/Musk worldview, men must hold all the power but are never expected to take responsibility for their own choices.

Trump’s ally and illustrated fellow Hitler-praiser Nick Fuentes this “childish kings” view of manhood in succinctly in a recent tweet: “If Trump loses, blame women.”

First of all, the best way to express this is “thank you women”. But she epitomizes the all-powerful, no-responsibility model of MAGA masculinity. The GOP nominated a candidate who introduced a ban on abortion and is, on his own account and in a court of law, a sex offender. His favorite words for women are “ugly” and “pigs”. On the rare occasion he praises a woman, it is almost always because she is sexually attractive to him and not for any talents she may have. He is explicitly running a campaign of male grievance. This complaint is comically unwarranted, especially a long line of complaints that women aren’t compliant enough or would rather be childless cat ladies than partnered with MAGA men.

On monday, Trump advisor and leader of Project 2025 John McEntee doubled down on telling the women explicitly, their votes are not wanted.

The men at MAGA would throw a party with a big banner that said “Women Not Welcome” and then complain that the shindig was a sausage fest. Let’s hope it’s enough to cost Trump the election.